Senate confirms Pentagon official Wilkie to lead Veterans Affairs
WASHINGTON — The Senate easily confirmed Robert Wilkie on Monday as the 10th secretary of Veterans Affairs, elevating the top Pentagon official to lead an agency that serves a key constituency for President Donald Trump but has floundered amidpolitical infighting.
The 86-9 bipartisan vote, with Democrats casting nearly all of the no votes, was without the drama of other Cabinet confirmations in the Trump administration. Mr. Wilkie was able to convince many Democrats that he would not privatize the agency. But he became the first VA secretary to fail to receive unanimous Senate confirmation, a reflection of the political tensions in what has long been a bipartisan corner of the government.
Several of the opposing votes, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kamala Harris , DCalif., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., came from potential candidates for president in 2020 who have opposed other Trump Cabinet nominees.
U.S. Sens. Bob Casey, DPa., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., both voted yes.
“Mr. Wilkie has already done an admirable job building on major VA reforms recently passed by Congress,” Mr. Toomey said after the vote. “I am confident that Mr. Wilkie will continue to serve our nation’s veterans well,” particularly as he implements the VA Mission Act.
Recently signed into law, the act will allow more veterans to use private physicians when VA medical centers cannot provide appointments within one month and within a 40-minute drive.
The president, in a statement issued by the White House, said Mr. Wilkie has “dedicated his life to serving his country with honor and pride. He has displayed great patriotism and a commitment to supporting and empowering America’s armed forces and veterans. Under his leadership, I have no doubt that the Department of Veterans Affairs will continue to make strides in honoring and protecting the heroic men and women who have served our Nation with distinction.”
Mr. Wilkie’s confirmation had been all but assured since his May nomination to succeed David Shulkin, a hospital executive and holdover from the Obama administration who clashed with the White House and the team of political appointees at VA. Mr. Trump had initially chosen White House physician Ronny Jackson for the job, but that candidacy imploded in a torrent of misconduct allegations.
Mr. Wilkie, 55, now head of military personnel at the Defense Department, was welcomed on Capitol Hill as an experienced official who could address the agency’s many challenges.
“Robert Wilkie is the real deal,” Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee said on the Senate floor before the vote. “I told him, ‘You have no excuses.’ We’re here to make sure VA has no excuses, only results.”
Mr. Isakson had told Mr. Wilkie at his confirmation hearing this month that poor morale was the biggest challenge he would face leading the government’s second-largest agency, with 360,000 employees.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., moved quickly to get Mr. Wilkie in place following a report in The Washington Post last week on a politically motivated purge of employees by VA’s interim leadership. After revelations that acting Secretary Peter O’Rourke has taken aggressive steps to sideline or reassign employees who are perceived to be disloyal, Mr. Isakson called for a confirmation vote “without delay.”
“Today, unlike never before, we’ve got political forces at work inside VA,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the committee’s top Democrat, said before the vote, describing an agency he said has lost sight of its mission of serving veterans.
“Good employees are being forced out not because of the job they’re doing but because of their views,” Mr. Tester said. “Veterans need a leader who will build bridges, not tear down the department to meet a political agenda.”
Mr. Wilkie, an Air Force reservist and the son of an Army artillery commander who was severely wounded in Vietnam, is now in charge of military personnel policy for the Trump administration. He has spent three decades working in Washington on military and national security issues, developing deep connections on Capitol Hill and in the White House. He has worked for some of the most polarizing political figures in Washington, including the late senator Jesse Helms, R-N.C., but his past embrace of some divisive cultural views did not deter his path to confirmation.